Lawyer Bernadette (Ruth Goodwin) and composer Oliver (James Graham)—young, in love, living together—must navigate their burgeoning relationship through a new 140-words/day law.

What will they say? How will they say it? Do words reveal or do they get in the way?

Weaving in and out of time and space, and featuring a meet cute and sharp, compelling performances, there’s lovely chemistry here. Goodwin’s Bernadette is delightfully neurotic and fastidious workaholic; Graham’s Oliver is laid back, creative and socially aware. Opposites attract, repel and complement.

Lovers navigate a 140-word day world in the provocative, intimate and sharply funny Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons.

Set in St. Louis, Amanda Wingfield (Tracey Hoyt) lives in a cramped apartment with her two young adult children Tom (James Graham) and Laura (Hannah Spear). Mr. Wingfield, famous and infamous for his charm and grin, is long gone – not dead, but absent; a fifth character in this story, present only in a grinning photograph. This is a memory play, narrated by Tom and featuring milestone moments in the family’s history. Painfully shy and incapacitated with fear, Laura has dropped out of school; preferring to live in a world of old music and glass animals. Concerned for her daughter’s future, Amanda, a displaced member of privileged, old southern society, hatches a plan to have Tom invite one of his warehouse co-workers (Jim, the Gentleman Caller, played by Samer Salem) over for dinner in the hopes of sparking a romance and eventual marriage for Laura. Meanwhile, Tom is working on a scheme of his own, with plans to break free from a life of ennui and movie house escape, and into a journey of real adventure.

James Graham with Hannah Spear (l) & Tracey Hoyt (r)

Lovely work from the cast in this intimate portrait of desperate dreaming family life. Graham brings a melancholy tinged with a wistful, and at times dark, sense of whimsy to his performance as Tom. A philosophical introvert, Tom’s a ticking time bomb of frustration; burdened with being the family breadwinner, he’s torn between taking care of his mother and sister, and making a life he can call his own. Hoyt’s Amanda is a complex combination of old southern gentility and ruthless realism. The life and world Amanda’s come to live in are both foreign and a step down for her socially speaking; disillusioned and desperate for a secure future, Amanda is a well-meaning nag with permanent worry lines on her forehead. And we see how rooted she is in the past as she slips into girlish coquetry when Jim arrives.

Tracey Hoyt & Samer Salem

Spear brings a lovely sense of fragility and solitude to Laura; a painfully shy and delicate soul who dares to dream. A creative and good-humoured introvert with low self-esteem, Laura is both genuine and awkward – and her failings are largely in her mind. Salem gives Jim a high-energy, charismatic and athletic spark. As Laura’s polar opposite, Jim’s high self-esteem – perhaps a bit too high – is tempered by a charm and sincerity; a man who appears to have peaked in high school, he is “disappointed but not discouraged,” and spends his time after work on self-improvement courses.

All are disappointed but not discouraged – to some degree, at least – but, as Amanda points out, despite one’s best efforts “Things have a way of turning out so badly.”

Keeping the script intact, but setting the scene in modern-day America – as well as offering a new take on the menagerie – this production of the Williams classic finds the past aptly mirrored in the present; bringing this story of ennui, economic struggle and dreams of a better life into current focus. When Laura plays her father’s old records, it’s on a CD player; and, beyond a mere collection of acquired knickknacks, the menagerie is her own creation. Like the mirror ball at the Paradise Dance Hall across the alley, the animals are covered in pieces of mirrored glass – and those who look upon Laura’s creations are reflected in them.

Staged in the round in the more intimate Incubator space at the Theatre Centre, the audience really gets a fly-on-the-wall perspective of this family drama. Shouts to set/costume designer Adriana Bogaard, and lighting designer Jareth Li for their work in creating this world.

The Howland Company’s production of TJ Dawe and Rita Bozi’s 52 Pick-up, directed by Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster and Paolo Santalucia, is a truly unique, moving and entertaining theatrical experience that audiences are loving at this year’s Toronto Fringe.

Part sharply written theatre and part improv, 52 Pick-up tells the story of one relationship, played out over 52 short scenes, all dictated by words or phrases written on a deck of playing cards. The actors throw the cards into the air, then randomly select one and play the scene – repeating until they’ve gone through the entire deck.

The show will never play the same way twice, partly because of how it’s structured and also due to the fact that the pair of actors changes with each show: Ruth Goodwin and Alex Crowther, Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster and Kristen Zara, Hallie Seline and Cameron Laurie, and Paolo Santalucia and James Graham.

The performance I saw yesterday featured Seline and Laurie – and they were a joy to watch. The relationship has broken up and we see them play out scenes from their history as a couple. Seline is lovely and sassy as the world traveller girlfriend of the pair, delivering some awesome emotive punctuation at the end of each scene, carrying through the mood as she places the finished card into the box. Laurie is adorkably sweet in a Harry Potter sort of way (he wears glasses in this), a homebody and so perfectly his girlfriend’s opposite/complement. Both actors are engaging and truthful as the couple struggles through the relationship’s ups and downs. Try as they may to be good sports with the other’s foibles, baggage and divergent life goals/desires, the two eventually come to face the reality that the relationship is just not meant to be.

From their awkward first meeting, to sharing personal histories, to the chilly silences and curse-laden fights, we see the world of this relationship play out over the course of 75 minutes – and, as the scenes are drawn randomly, the relationship is not revealed in a chronological arc. And I love how it all begins and ends with “Tell me a story…”

52 Pick-up is a remarkable show – a brilliant concept with an outstanding cast.